MEAN PEOPLE SUCK

Just one day after it was awarded the 2012 Olympic games, London was rocked. Dozens were killed and hundreds wounded as four bombs detonated along the city's mass transit system. The terrorist strike was the worst attack on London since the Second World War, and a reminder that there remains poison in the bloodstream of western civilization.

The bomb blasts were claimed by – let me make sure I get this right – the Secret Organization Group of Al-Qa'ida of Jihad Organization in Europe. These folks are clearly trying to have their cake and eat it too. You can’t very well be a SECRET organization while claiming responsibility for large-scale homicides. Can you? It’s one or the other, bastards – not both. Are you in the closet or out?

I find it profoundly unsettling that such a small group of free radicals can execute such large acts of catastrophic violence, with great precision and apparent ease. And it's hard for me to imagine preventing these destructive events when central to the success of terrorism is the element of surprise. Indeed, terrorist acts are successful because we never see them coming. Our governments reflexively preach vigilance in their wake - the U.S. Office of Homeland Security wasted no time in putting the nation's mass transit system on orange alert. Vigilance is certainly a reasonable request, but I wonder if a heightened state of awareness doesn’t minimize the risk of attack so much as it does the potential damage from one. If an individual or group is dead set on creating widespread havoc, they need only the resources and half a brain to make it happen. Two familiar qualifications: willing and able.

Terror prevention efforts have primarily (if not solely) focused on reducing the ABILITY of radicals to do great harm. Meanwhile, it appears little progress has been made in the way of eradicating the DESIRE. The global war on terror has been a success insofar as it has made it more difficult for terrorists to operate. But while they are less ABLE now, I wonder if perhaps they are not more WILLING. And where there is a will...